Trust nothing until you have it in writing...insurance part 2

After calling the insurance company every few days, finally I got an "answer" from someone.  She said "I see the form in your file and it has not been rejected."  I asked what that meant, and she said that it meant Shawn was covered.  "Not rejected" didn't sound quite good enough to me, so I asked if I would be getting a letter to that effect.  She said to expect a letter in the next 5-7 days.  Sure enough, 5 days later a letter appeared.  Unfortunately, it did not say what I was told; in fact it said exactly the opposite - that the Shawn does not qualify for continuation of coverage.   It is their determination that he is capable of self support and therefore not eligible for coverage unless he is a full time student.

This can be appealed, and we're working on that.  Meanwhile, it turns out that prior to this decision, he was being covered by them in January and February, so he is now eligible for COBRA from my new insurance company.  And because the event is a loss of dependent eligibility, he is entitled to 36 months of COBRA, rather than the 18 months from IBM.  (The event for IBM was not loss of status, it was loss of coverage, which has different time limits).

So for now, we're switching COBRA from one policy to another, and if nothing else we'll at least have that for the next three years, until he turns 24.  Hopefully between now and then something will change for the better - his health or our country's insurance situation - is it too much to hope for BOTH of these?